


*S*O*S*

by pinstripedJackalope



Series: Keith's Binder [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Witchcraft, Blood and Injury, Chronic Pain, Demons, Fire, Fire Magic, Fire Powers, Found Family, Gen, Homunculi, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Keith (Voltron) Whump, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Keith (Voltron)-centric, Kuro and Kuron are the same person I borrowed some ideas from both of them, Magic, Magical Realism, Mental Health Issues, Monsters, Past Drug Addiction, Past Drug Use, Shiro (Voltron) is Missing, To a point, Trans Character, Trans Keith (Voltron), Trans Pidge | Katie Holt, Unconventional Wands, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vomiting, Whump, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-04-30 03:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14487372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinstripedJackalope/pseuds/pinstripedJackalope
Summary: This is a not-quite-happy story about a boy with fire at his fingertips.  He makes his 'home' wherever he can rest his head, just running from a past that left him scarred.  Until, that is, he gets caught up with a ragtag group of college kids who soon become his family.  He wants to have this, but is it really safe to stop running?





	1. Not All Who Wander Are Lost

**Author's Note:**

> [Here's something to listen to if you want. The first song hits the mood of this first chapter, I think.](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjUOr6SklsIwPpbCuU5M8cYpacf6rqNWM)
> 
> It's not going to be quite one song per chapter, but each chapter will have a song, if you're into that.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> [And this is where the idea for his bat comes from!](http://fangirltothefullest.tumblr.com/post/165381916365/unwinona-nobby-art-bastion-official-so-if)

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

 

*

Sometimes, when he’s walking the length of one more street, in one more town, carefully cataloging the steps that stretch beyond him both forward and behind, the saying _not all who wander are lost_ crosses Keith’s mind.  When people say that, it’s uplifting, in a sense—an everyday reminder that there is joy in wayfaring.  People _enjoy_ crossing borders, soaking up new sights with fresh eyes, taking note of that which is different and that which burns familiar.  There is poetry about this stuff, beautiful pieces of art dedicated to the voyages people take.  They find it invigorating and they want to share the wonder with the rest of the world.

It seems awfully sweet to him, to find pleasure in this sort of existence.  Like the carefully constructed icing on the side of a cake in a display case, styled after old-fashioned home-baked goods.  Cane sugar crafted into a delicate sculpture.  If he had one wish, a wish upon a birthday candle on a cake from one of those cases or a falling star shooting through the sky or the blue glow of a digital clock reading 11:11, Keith would ask the universe to let him feel anything as sweet. 

At twenty and some change, he’s stopped sending out wishes.  It never has done him any good.  He supposes that at this point there’s nothing out there granting wishes, or at least none to him, because they’ve never come to pass.  In all the years he’s walked, he’s only ever found wanderlust to be a mindless, unstoppable force.  Something wreathed in the color gray, like the ash weighing down the sky after a volcanic eruption.  His is a relentless kind of movement, the kind that doesn’t spare enough time for him to clean out the grains of sand wedged in every crevice of his being, leaving him to battle the same drag day after day.  He feels nothing but exhaustion in the wear on the soles of his boots.  When he looks up at the fiery colors burnt across the sky, refractions from the frozen, jeweled edge of the setting sun, the only wonder he finds is the question of when he’ll finally reach an immovable object.  He thinks that maybe, when he does, he’ll figure out which side of the coin he falls on.  Lost?  Or just in motion?  Will he find equilibrium, or just be torn apart? 

Until then, two things are certain.

One: Keith Kogane has no place to call home.  He may not be sure if he’s lost, yet—jury is still out on that one—but a place to return to at the end of every day?  A welcome mat and a bed waiting just for him?  Those do not exist.  They are tall tales, droplets like the sprays of seawater that evaporate at his touch.

Two: the closest he will likely ever _get_ to ‘home’ is the familiar tug of the runes always at the tips of his fingers. 

He carves them into every doorway of every makeshift roof that happens to hold back the rain.  When there are no doors, he draws them onto the concrete underbellies of highway overpasses, the tags of one-person cots in shelters, subway benches where he stays for an hour or two before being forced to move on, walls of caves that he stumbles upon.  Each night, his respite is marked by the same runes, stretching back and back and back to thousands of places where his head has rested.  He’s sure that by now they’re printed in the lava flow of the veins that spread across his chest, built up year by year as the molten ore in his heart oozes out and solidifies.  Blood, lava, ink… wanderlust, inertia, _motion_.  His runes are the tail of a comet, burning hot everywhere he’s ever laid his head, a trail leading straight to him.  He’s never slowed down enough to be caught.  Not once.

That’s how it is for him.  Homeless and with nothing but a few symbols for protection, he runs.  Never puts down roots, never lets himself falter no matter how tired he is.  The shapes of the runes are seared into his fingerprints, always with him, always ready.  They are part of him, just as much as the dark, uncut hair that curls on his neck and the soft aching of his perpetually bruised ribs.  They are enough to soothe him wherever he finds sleep. 

Tonight, it’s in the basement of a church.  There are already scratches up and down the short, square doorways, hallowed ground or no.  He takes his time working around existing marks, making sure he doesn’t break something he shouldn’t, and when he’s done the runes light up like embers in the wood.  A breath leaves him—not quite relief, but something close.  He curls up in his jacket—a thick winter coat, despite it being early spring—and presses the leather wrapped around one wrist against the boney cage over his heart.  The pain is bearable, today. 

He drifts.  Half asleep, he murmurs lullabies, the soft words intended for the Things that Watch.  He knows they won’t come closer, can’t go past the runes, but they listen all the same.  He’s never sure quite why.  By all accounts, they shouldn’t.  By all accounts, they’re something worse than humans, and humans are known for the murk that resides in their chests.  No monster, no beast, should find the murmurings of a sleepy, broken little witch of any interest.  But they do.  So he does.

They’ve always been more like the stars, to him, anyway.  Why heed warnings about stars?  They’re too distant, too cold, to do any harm.  Sure, they’re incomparably meaningful when transcribed to paper, and their patterns hold stories galore about the deaths of a thousand men, but those tales only apply when you, terrestrial being as you are, stretch further than you’re meant to.  Keith leaves them alone.  He has no reason to reach.  All his energy is reserved for making it through one more day down here, on the soil.

He sleeps among ash, and by the time morning light breaks in the slivers of windows at the tops of the walls, the runes are black and soft like charcoal when he drags his thumb down them on his way out.

 

Sunlight.  It seeps into his clothes, through the strands of his hair, turning them from coal-black to shimmering, inky blues.  He doesn’t look like someone who likes sunlight—too pale, too much grime on his face—but he enjoys it far more than the fires that flare up at night.  Nighttime keeps you hidden, sure, but it’s indifferent to your suffering.  Everyone suffers at night.  Daylight is what gives you enough relief to see pathways ahead of you, carved into possible futures that are in full illumination.  Daylight offers choice.  You can turn your back on the shadows during the day, because they are small and insignificant compared to the forks and divides and sheer numbers of _options_.

He smiles at the prospect of it all.  A good night’s sleep, the fatigue abating just far enough to give him room to step forward.  It will be a good day.  He’s got things to do, but it’s that time of the morning when buses don’t run and there’s no rush.  It’s nice, to have time… space.  He doesn’t get to slow and enjoy things too often, but today he’ll let himself bask.  For a little while.

He closes his eyes and aims his nose toward the horizon, half-hidden in tree branches that list across the wall that’s supposed to keep them contained.  Overgrown is one word, but to him they feel weary, their bones heavy in the same way his bones are heavy.  They might not have the magic that sings in his marrow, but the energy of the universe itself sometimes hums at the same frequency.  Not for the first time, he wonders if his power has nothing to do with fire and everything to do with entropy.

He’s knocked quite literally from his thoughts when someone collides with him.  The whole thing happens in a rather dramatic fashion.  It’s as if Keith is an iceberg scraping through the hull of a ship instead of just a man standing on the side of the street.  The stranger nearly goes down, nearly hits the unforgiving surface of a concrete slab full frontal, but _somehow_ , against all odds, they manage to get a good grasp of Keith’s jacket and save themself a bloody nose.  The two of them stay like that for a moment, Keith holding the person’s weight while they’re busy staring at the ground like it nearly swallowed them whole.  Then, with an overstated twirl, they haul themself upright, talking all the while.

“Jesus Christ, dude!  Oh, you scared the _shit_ out of me.  You looked like a wraith coming out of the darkness like it was gunning for my soul!  I had no idea you were standing there, I’m so sorry—!”

A man, Keith is guessing.  Well, a kid.  A young man, college-age—not that Keith himself is much older.  Morning contemplation now broken, Keith brushes that line of thought away as soon as he can, choosing to shut himself down in the face of caffeinated enthusiasm.  He eyes the cup of starbucks coffee being waved around, miraculously undropped, and instantly picks up a name.  Lance.  Well, Lance, good morning to you.  He lifts his eyes to Lance’s and cuts him off mid-rant, saying, “That isn’t what wraiths do.”

The Lance guy frowns, gapes a little, and steps back.  Makes an aborted motion as if he wants to straighten Keith’s coat on his shoulders but thinks better of it.  Says, “That’s, uh… that’s cool, I guess.  I, um, owe you one for that killer save after I tripped all over you.”  Stands there awkwardly for a moment, like he’s buffering, his eyes twitching across Keith’s clothes (ragged), his hair (a few days out from a wash), his skin (smudged with soot he can never fully scrub clean).

He then starts digging in his pocket, shoving all the spare change he can find into Keith’s gloved hands, and twists away holding his coffee aloft.  He is unsubtle about the odd look he throws back over his shoulder as he stalks down the sidewalk in the opposite direction he was heading before. 

Keith doesn’t quite know what to think of that look.  Maybe Lance was just unsettled coming so close.  Wouldn’t be the first time.  Some people seem to just… feel the fire burning under his skin.  They wince away, and rightly so—warmth is one thing, but Keith isn’t warm.  He scorches.  He’s barely contained.

He only has a few more minutes to ponder.  At the bidding of the Schedule, the busses are beginning to move.  He gets on one marked with a shimmering H on the door, a mark that few people can see, and forgets about the whole interaction.  The heart of the small city passes the windows and he keeps to his feet, swaying to the tune of the motion.  He’s going out of his way to run an errend today, not that he has much of a ‘way’ on the best of days.  The first stop is in one of the old neighborhoods, the ones where the porches are rotting through and squatters are more welcome than buyers.  There are places like that in every city he’s been to.

He gets off the bus, and with the ease of something practiced, he pricks his finger on the knife at his belt and draws a quick sigil on the bus door.  When he turns away, he’s already pulling up his hood.  He’s not here to socialize.  Instead, he makes his way to the farthest loop on the farthest street that has houses that are still standing, scraping his nails across the names and numbers on mailboxes as he goes.  Rust stains his fingers.

When he reaches the house he wants, he stands astride the old iron fence lying on the overgrown lawn.  In a curling script, the surname _Zarkon_ marks the edge of the drive.  On this side of the district, the houses are all but mansions—their neglect comes not from forclosure but from something simpler, though arguably no less violent.  They have been forgotten.  A purposeful fate or not, he doesn’t know—he’s never had the misfortune of meeting Mr. Zarkon himself.  Just his son.

It’s his son who gave the permission for what Keith is about to do.  Nothing serious, nothing like he wants to do—if he could burn the house down he gladly would, but that isn’t in the stars today.  Instead, he begins to inspect the fence lying wounded at his feet. 

The iron is old, perhaps upwards of sixty years of wear on it, but unlike the scraps that could be found even two streets back, there is no touch of rust.  Each bar is well-made, coated in the highest quality paint so as to withstand a hundred monsoon seasons.  Everything about them, from the decorative whorls at the top and bottom of each of the vertical rods to the beautifully crafted hinges of the gate that no longer serves its purpose, talks about old money.

Keith does not care for the money.  He just happens to have a need for iron today.

It takes forty minutes of dedicated work to saw free three of the daintier pieces, though dainty doesn’t cover how even the slender bars are substantial in his hands.  They’re also hollow, delightfully so, and ring when he taps them on a nearby wall.  He twirls one, feeling it’s balance.  They’ll do nicely.

His next stop is less defined.  He needs something in particular and he has an idea of where he might find it, but the actual search eats up hundreds of footfalls before it comes anywhere near fruition.  Eventually, though, he finds a sign for a garage sale.  It’s delightfully kismet when he finds two old baseball bats, solid wood, for the exact price of Lance’s Starbucks change. 

Tucking them alongside the iron in his ratty old backpack, Keith then goes in search of food.  He’s not quite destitute, thank you very much, though money isn’t something prominent in his life.  He wonders if Lance would think differently of him if he knew what his pocket change was put toward.  Sustenence versus protection… at least it isn’t drugs.  The thought curls wryly across his mind, an errant twist of smoke.  Sustenence versus protection versus self-medication.  An inside joke.

He gets a slice of pizza off of a park bench, forgotten by some stranger.  When he sits, he runs the tips of his fingers across a hundred runes and symbols carved into the bottom of the wood there.  He needs to save most of his energy for the shop, but he has enough spare, he thinks, to charge up the string of pictographs that netted him his meal.  His fire is still fresh and hot, low in his chest.  His ribs still feel okay.  The cloy of soot is still bearable.

There is a machine shop next to a nightclub just off Main Street, and that’s where he heads when the embers die down.  _May they who have plenty give to those who have little_ , the runes say.  Basically, anyway—the language of spellwork is knotted and winding, and the exact letter of the law means much less than the intent behind it.  You can’t do good by intending evil, that sort of thing.

Keith hums a little to himself.  He cares as much about morality as he does about the soles of his shoes, but it’s a hot topic on the lips of many of those he’d call peers.  Keith is… more concrete.  Speaks in actions.  Can’t stand to listen—they talk in so many circles it’s like they forget that they’ve done both good and bad, and the only way to tip the scale one direction or another is to just _do_. 

Like he’s doing now.  He reaches the shop door, uncaring of the clatter and shrill of machinery coming from within, and pricks his finger again on his knife.  With his blood, hot enough to sear wood but not quite enough to permnantly mark the glass, he draws something like a _K_.  For a few seconds it glows, granting him passage, but before he enters he makes sure to squeeze out another drop to draw a second.  Forward payment for the next person who needs it.  He reaches behind him and pulls free one of the iron bars and leans it just ouside the door, beside the rune.  A gift.

Inside, he nods to a few of the people working.  Then he loses himself into the rhythm of _doing_.

Wood and chipped paint passing through his fingers, the taste of sawdust as he cuts open both bats, longways, tip to toe.  Machinery cranking at the press of his palm, a buzz of electricity.  The vibration of a table saw.  Flakes and chips of wood, the guts of one bat then the other floating to the dirty floor, shavings of timber that have never seen the light of day until now.  Three-inch iron nails that bite through the remainder of the meat at the encouragement of a vice and a hammer, tips aimed outward, deadly—a handful for each length of wood.  He checks and double-checks measurements, pressing halves back together, settling an iron core at the center of each bat to check how snug the fit.  Runs his fingers up the elegant curls on either side of iron bar number one, iron bar number two.

It’s a few hours before he has the iron cut properly, and by then he knows he’s going to ache for this later.  He doesn’t really mind.  With care born of fingers that were once too young to properly hold a lit match, he leans in and carves out the runes— _his_ runes—in identical rows, one set per each half of each bat, running down the left side.  While they’re still glowing he adds wood glue, on the right side of each halved length of wood—to each core of iron—to the heads of the nails nestled deep in what would be the heartwood.  He presses everything together, watching patiently as glue boils out the sides of the newly re-crafted bats, encouraging it to spread evenly until it hardens.  It’s another few hours for the glue to set enough to sand it down from the sides, and then nothing but the work of moments to unfurl the beaten strips of leather from around his wrists.  He takes extra care to wrap up the lighter of the bats, now wands, leaving no rough edges on the grip.

Task all but complete, he swings it experimentally.  It’s weighty—not too heavy, seeing as the additional metal (mostly hollow, after all) does not add much more than the wood subtracted, but it’s solid.  As if it parts the air and drags the displaced molecules behind it, a wall of matter.  Certainly indimidating even if it doesn’t hit its mark.  There’s something about the delicate whorls of metal that bookend the length—it’s like the bitter tang of a fresh cherry atop a milkshake.  Like the goosebumps that course up the skin of your spine during the drop of a good song.

He can’t help the smile that ghosts across his tired face.  This will do quite nicely.

 

It’s amazing what people don’t see when you walk with purpose.  He’s not even sure where he’s going, but as long as he keeps his stride long and his eyes ahead no one thinks to take a double-glance at the handles protruding from his bag.  They really don’t have the space in their schedules to formulate comments and put up a fuss.  He supposes this is rush-hour, all the execs and office-people working their way toward home. 

He avoids brushing any of them on the way past, lest they catch the soot-spots that are flaking from his fingers.  He’s coughing now, ash lodged in his chest, but he still has some ways to go.  His ribs ache, but they’ll hold.  Charcoal may be soft but by now he’s learned—you always reinforce that which comes in contact with fire.

When he walks past some of the beggars, he pauses long enough to give out a few of his last coins.  He’s good at scavenging.  He’ll last.  Though if he doesn’t… well, starving isn’t the way he’ll go, that’s for certain.

Eventually, he arrives.  ‘Arrives’.  As if he had a date and a time to show up.  Time and space both like to slip away from him and he’s never been punctual a day in his life, always in the wrong place at the wrong time, but sometimes fate works with him.  Tonight, he’s lucky.  When he finds who he’s looking for, there’s no one else around.  She has a backpack filled with road detritus and sparce belongings, a ragged hood pulled down over her face.  He can see the tense set of her shoulders when he beckons her to follow him, but she comes willingly.  Together they walk down to the place just outside the main tangle of the city streets, where the drainage tunnels lead out into a concrete basin before the sprawl of the suburbs crops up. 

“I have something for you,” he says, knowing the sting of soot is heavy on his tongue, the backs of his teeth blackened by it.  She doesn’t seem to mind—there’s an eagerness to her when she lifts her hood, revealing wrinkled skin marked with bruises, short gray hair shorn close to her head. 

She’s a little confused, maybe scared, when he sets down his bag and begins to work the lighter of the bat-wands free from the other, but he hands it to her handle-first.  She breathes out, grasping it in hands that are just slightly swollen.  “You made this?” she croaks.

He nods, tilting one side of his mouth up into a smirk.  Pride isn’t something he feels often, but he’s always been good with his hands.  The only question that’s ever been asked of them is whether they hurt more than they help.

He’s really working to tip the balance toward the latter.  The wand is hers—he just hopes it’s enough.

Hours later, he’s too tired to find somewhere out of sight to sleep.  The fire is licking too close to his throat to actually doze off, anyway.  It’s as good a time as any to see if his own wand will hold up.  The runes should be good enough to take care of an attacker or two, but can they hold off what he’s running from?  Will they keep the supernatural at bay?

It’s as good a night as any to see.  He sits in shadows cast by streetlights, propping his head up using the bat that is unsheathed beside him, his fingers curled around the ornamental end piece.  God, he’s tired… resentment isn’t the word for the pain lashing at the inside of his sternum, but it’s close. 

Maybe the runes will fail him.  Maybe tonight will be the night his momentum falls flat.  In some sort of sick way, he hopes it will.  He breathes in and the pressure of heat builds inside him—he breathes out and the smoke leaves a coating of new soot from his solar plexus to his sinuses.  He’s not sure if he could speak at this point, particulates hanging heavy on his vocal chords.  It’s been this bad before, but only rarely has it been any worse.

He doesn’t regret making the wands.  He does regret the tax they cost.  He closes his eyes against the wavering heat of his own body, wondering idly if he can even sweat anymore.  When your blood literally boils inside of you, it can be hard to get a grip on baseline homeostasis.  Humans… at this point he’s more closely related to the jaws that snap at his heels.

He laughs.  There’s something volcanic about the sound.  “Take me or don’t take me,” he says to the Things that Watch.  Now is the time… or it isn’t.  Either way.

 _Either way_.

*


	2. If You’re Going Through Hell, Keep Going

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith gets involved and breaks his Number One Rule: NEVER STAY IN ONE PLACE LONGER THAN NECESSARY.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Your mood song, if you want it.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mclbmAXDDDU)

 

 

* * *

 

 

*

He emerges from the darkness of that night with a coating of ash like a shroud across his shoulders.  It is a cloak of whirling dust and choking spider-webbed lace dragging on his skin, the echo of popping embers that bit into his throat like starving rats, a hundred infinitely small knives embedded in the raw and scratched tissue of his lungs.  His ribs scream in pain, his fingertips chilled to the bone, as the fire recedes back into its usual crevices.  He feels awful.  But hey, They didn’t take him.  He is still untouched by the Things that Watch.

That is the first blessing that comes from the wand.  A week later, the second arrives—he wakes one day to find that day by day his lungs have slowly healed themselves up and for once they are completely clear.  There isn’t a hint of heat or soot anywhere.  His ribs feel cool and strong like they’re regrowing the layers of calcium lost to the last dozen lava washes, and his entire body feels healthier, lighter.  The slow itch of knitting tissue dances under his skin, the open wounds he’s resigned himself to, are smaller and less noteworthy than they’ve ever been.  Thus, he comes to the following conclusion:

This wooden stick and the iron rod jammed inside of it have united to become the best thing he’s ever owned. 

Admittedly, the bar isn’t very high.  Some might doubt that the bar even exists.  A detailed list of all his belongings from the past four years would contain a grand total of one (1) backpack stuffed with menstrual hygiene supplies, half a dozen (6) sets of ratty clothes worn one by one into the ground, two (2) barely-holding-on binders, one (1) decent winter coat, one (1) pair of one-foot-in-the-grave boots, one (1) knife gifted to him from a specter of his past, and one (1) totaled and subsequently discarded motorcycle. 

Maybe, if he were to calculate in the possessions he had in the era before trouble started to dog his heels, he’d find something better to compare, but… he can’t.  He rubs the spot on his ribs that should hurt but doesn’t.  That was a time when ‘value’ wasn’t derived from having a good balance between necessity and portability.  When he could afford to keep things dear to his heart.  He can’t look back—that’s a different kind of ache altogether, one he’s not ready to face.  The road has taken the fun out of small, sentimental tokens. 

The wand, on the other hand?  Epic, enjoyable, _and_ useful.  Like an extension of himself, his runes burning hot inside of it.  Strong enough to keep his scent out of the nostrils of any number of unsavory creatures gunning for his throat, sturdy enough to hold him upright when he’s ready to collapse in on himself.  He’s finding that he’s done himself a _major_ disservice by waiting so long to make it.  He regrets all the days that he spent flailing around with the bad taste of uncertainty in his mouth.  Uncertainty and ash are never a good combination.  Free of both for the first time in four years…

Keith drags a breath in, eyes closed, the sun on his face.  The air feels somehow cleaner, the light somehow brighter.  For the second time he’s out on the streets before this city wakes, and it’s as if he’s staring into a mirror that reflects back the morning exactly one week ago when he did the exact same thing, only _this_ image has been cleansed of all the grit and grime that he thought would trail in his wake for the rest of his life. 

It seems like it should feel unreal, a mirage slipping through his fingers.  And yet… he’s never felt so grounded.  How long has it been since he’s been able to plant his feet on the ground and _brace himself_ without having to lean into the pain curling in his chest?  Two years, four years?  Longer?  The last time he chanced on footing stable enough to dig deep and hit the steel of his resolve must have been when he found his perch at rock bottom after the wreck where he lost his bike.

He’s seen a lifetime’s worth of wear and tear since that day.  Heard all the discordant notes the coastline has to offer.  Spoken unhinged words to himself in the dead of night, anything Watching be damned, to let himself know that he hasn’t lost yet—that if his heart still beats, if the flames still burn somewhere inside of him, then there’s still a chance.  It may be slim to none, but it still exists.  _If you_ _’re going through hell_ , as they say, _keep going_.  _You have to keep going_.

And he did.  And it was _worth it_.  He feels like a puppy sniffing out a new, fresh scent as he strides down Main past the bus depot, the wand tucked away in his backpack.  It’s still hard to say if or when he’ll ever come to a stop, but when he tilts his head just right he can follow the sound of fresh motion like he has a divining rod embedded between his eardrums.  It resonates in his chest, a healing tune and a reminder that he has a _purpose_.  The road doesn’t seem so long, and the grind doesn’t ache so much, and it doesn’t matter right now whether or not he’s lost because he still has a direction to go.

The horizon is waiting for him.

Soon enough, anyway.  There’s time enough to enjoy a sunrise.  He’s adrift, content, in the current of the early morning melody when he realizes that someone is standing in front of him, immobile.  Slotting his consciousness back into his body to crack an eye open in annoyance, Keith takes in the man.  Well, the kid.  A young man, college-age—somehow this feels really familiar.  The melody dies out with one last bright, ringing note that aches of an expanse of water the exact color of the eyes that are trying to catch his.  He gets the sense that the falling hum of the universe is amused, somehow, as it leaves him staring at those clear blue eyes.

Blue eyes… eyes that are looking at him… rather expectantly?  What on Earth could someone expect of him this early in the morning?  Keith fights to keep his feet planted, to not take the first step back, his pain-free high taking a hit for the first time today.  Does he know this person?  He’s hardly been in this place a week, and the checklist of people he’s had meaningful interactions with starts with Lotor and ends with the battered old woman now in possession of his second bat.  He knows he’s talked to more people than that because even with his way of life he’s not immune to cashier small-talk, but if he’s frank (and he usually is), none of them _mattered_. 

The only thing Keith can think to do is prepare for any number of the things that come from the mouths of strangers on the street.  _Sign this survey_ , maybe.  _Help find that one tourist attraction.  Direct a guy toward a place where he can bang a girl for cheap._   The only people who come to talk are the ones who want something and don’t have any qualms about who they ask to get it.  And yet, if this is a solicitation, Keith has no idea what the solicited goods are.  No clipboard, no bag of holy books hung on a shoulder, no miasma of entitlement or barely contained need driving him forward.  Instead, there is a look of—concern?  Concerned hope?—just underneath the easy smile on the guy’s face. 

“Hey,” the guy says, rocking back on his heels.  He threads his fingers through his short hair, pushing it back from his forehead for a moment before it flicks back into place.  Keith is struck by how clean he looks, even with the long-sleeved shirt that is wrinkled at the elbows.  “I was hoping to catch you after that mess last week.  You have a minute?”

Whoever this is, it’s still not clicking.  Swallowing hard, Keith feels a tingle at his fingertips.  He should know who this is.  He feels it.  It’s instinctual, and instincts are the only lifeline he still has.  The problem is that there are people who are good with faces, there are people who aren’t so good but can get by with some fake confidence, and then, at the very bottom of the food chain, below all those people, is Keith.  He’d like to call it indifference, but that’s just not true—he can’t even hold onto the faces he wants, _needs_ , to keep close.  There’s a joke in there somewhere about what happens to a kid who can’t remember his mother’s face.  He’s never laughed at that one.

Staring at the enigma in front of him, he goes the safe route.  At least… he thinks it’s the safe route.  He’s not so sure anymore when his blunt-but-hopefully-polite statement of “I have no idea who you are” is met by disbelief.

“Oh, come on!  Really?  I gave you like five of my hard-earned dollars after you jump-scared me two blocks down from here at ass o’clock in the morning last week.  You don’t remember that?”

Oh.  That.  The guy who drove himself onto Keith like a ship ramming an iceberg.  Without conscious thought, Keith’s eyes flick to one energetic brown hand, looking for a name.  Somehow, despite the hand being empty today, his memory dredges up five letters scrawled on a paper cup in some barista’s harried penmanship—L A N C E.

“Right,” he says.  “The wraith guy.”  This clears up absolutely nothing about what the dude actually wants, but at least he can place their interaction.  That’s a relief.  Keith waits for something else.

“The wra—the _wraith guy_?!” Lance says instead of elucidating.  “That’s who I am to you?  That’s hurtful, man.  I thought I’d at least get pegged as the ‘beautiful specimen with the bountiful flowing cash’ but I see how it is.”

Keith starts to frown, but there’s something in Lance’s tone that nudges him gently away from the defensive.  Is that… humor?  Is Lance trying to joke around with him?  He thinks so, but he’s never been good at picking up those cues.  A better question: is Lance expecting a prompt, witty response that Keith probably doesn’t have in him to give? 

Apparently not, because a moment later Lance starts to flap his hands about with a laugh, going, “Sorry, sorry.  I’m not trying to be a jackass.  I wasn’t trying to be one last week, either, by the way!  It just, um… it occurred to me like two hours later that you weren’t asking for money so I probably shouldn’t have, you know… assumed.  About that.  So, no offense meant.”  He looks at Keith with his bottom lip pinched between his teeth, somehow making himself look like a small, shy little kitten despite the fact that he’s an inch or so taller than Keith.

Keith nearly shrugs it off before he realizes that it might come off as too curt considering that the guy spent a whole week waiting to apologize.  “Um, no offense taken…?” he tries.  It’s been something like a century and a half since he’s had a conversation like this, with the joking and the apologies and—does this guy think he’s in college, too?  God, he hopes not.  That’s a can of worms that he’s more than willing to bury if given half a chance.  Shifting on one foot, he waits to see if there’s anything else or if he can… go now.

Picking up on his uncertainty, Lance lets out another laugh, just this side of awkward.  “Actually… and I really hope I’m not being, like, super intrusive here, but… my friend has this thing and told me to bring a friend?  And I couldn’t get you out of my head because last week was a _clusterfuck,_ you know what I mean?  Anyway, it’s just an ‘art’ show—” he air quotes the word, rolling his eyes, “—and there will be some finger food because that’s what you do at an ‘art’ show apparently, so… do you want to go?”

And just like that, Keith feels the solid ground underneath him falling away again.  He hasn’t been invited out in… a long time.  He hasn’t been _recognized_ by someone other than Lotor in a long time.  He’s not a recognizable person _by design_ —the runes that grace his very soul, the ones he uses to keep himself safe night after night, spell out the pressure of silence, the fragrance of nothingness.  He recreated himself once-upon-a-time to be transient, to take up no space in the memories of the people who live normal lives.  There is no reason to go anywhere with Lance.  No reason to support this friend of a stranger, no reason to walk the footsteps of someone with ambitions and futures and _finger food_.  They’re not friends, not even acquaintances yet, they haven’t even exchanged names for real.  Does Lance realize what he’s asking?  Does he know that Keith doesn’t go to art shows, air quotes or otherwise?  Does he have any idea what he’s offering? 

A look at wide, expectant eyes tells Keith that the answer is _no_.

Keith is about to say as much, to set this guy straight, when it hits him—he has no real reason _not_ to go to the quote-unquote ‘art’ show of a friend of a stranger, either.  It’s just a pit stop on his way out of town—what could go wrong?

 

A lot.  The answer is a _lot_.  Just walking down the street with Lance is an Experience with a capital E.  If Keith thought that their collision last week was dramatic, he’s soon put to rights about how very wrong he was.  The collision wasn’t dramatic.  Lance’s _life_ is dramatic, and one teeny little Titanic vs. iceberg showdown is like a flake of sawdust chipped off the grand piano of his general existence.

It starts with introductions as Lance starts to walk him down the street, pace varying moment to moment because of the bounce Lance is obviously fighting down.  “My name is Leandro Alphonso Naolin Cordoza Espinoza-McClain.  People call me Lance because I _lance-em_ with my stunning good looks.”

“Keith,” Keith says.  He’s too busy staring at the finger-guns pointing at his chest to fully realize the fact that it’s only seven in the morning, and the show won’t open to the public until two, which means that Lance fully intends to keep them occupied for the next seven hours.

He comes to regret that soon enough.

Hour One: coffee and croissants, not from Starbucks.  Lance buys because the shop is out of the way.  He’s apparently started boycotting Starbucks since last week, and the sneer on his face when he states as much just makes Keith want to laugh.  When pressed for reasons why the guy eats up an entire forty-minute chunk of their seven hours with a story about how one of his friends was working a second job at the Starbucks on Main and made _one little tweak_ to their frosting recipe only to have corporate come down on him like a sledgehammer.  A sledgehammer, Keith.

Hour Two: magazines.  Where he keeps finding them, Keith doesn’t know.  It’s like they just appear in his hands.  Does he pay for them?  Is he stealing them?  No fucking clue.  It’s a goddamn mystery.  Suddenly Keith is getting the abridged history of every tabloid couple in vogue this week.  He tries to ask something about the Jersey Shore people and is promptly informed that he has the tabloid-literacy of a three-year-old child.

Hour Three: stroll around the park.  Halfway through, while rolling around in the unkempt grass with someone’s Very Friendly Dog, Lance remembers about a class he needs to get to.  This time he gets a stricken expression.  Keith wants to laugh again and even starts to insist that they can meet up later, only to find Lance’s long fingers wrapped around his elbow, dragging him up the street.  They barely make it.

Hours Four and Five: instead of leaving him in a public area to chill and not be a nuisance, Lance drags them both to the classroom and sits them down at a table like there’s nothing out of the ordinary going on.  It’s an upperclassman undergrad writing class, and no matter how hard he tries, Keith can’t tell whether or not Lance is majoring in writing or just picked it as an elective.  The teacher takes one look at them and sighs.  Keith shrinks in his seat and prays that no one makes him participate.  He feels like he’s seventeen again.  He excuses himself to the bathroom and gets laughed out of the room.  He’s at least a year older than most of these people.  How the fuck dare they.  Also, who the hell is supposed to remember that you’re not supposed to ask permission to go to the bathroom at University?

Hour Six: Lance tries to make it up to him via bribery.  Thank god the bribes are to someone else.  Keith and the cashier with pigtails share a look.  Pigtail girl rolls her eyes.  “Oh come on, Nyma, you owe me!” Lance finally says, completely flushed and waving his arms around.  She relents only to get him away from the counter.  Keith doesn’t understand why anyone would go to such lengths to procure a hot dog, but it’s not his problem.

Hour Seven: He should have thought this through.  Really, really thought this through.  Came up with a few boundaries, maybe, because he’s starting to understand that Lance doesn’t _have_ those.  What’s that thing that tells you not to do something stupid because it’s stupid?  Oh, yeah: _common sense_.  Another thing that Lance is apparently lacking, because they’re outside again and Keith is just getting used to the flow of constant conversation when he’s suddenly dragged sideways for what feels like the hundredth time.  They’re in a gym, now.  24-hour access, it says.  Lance flashes a grin at the big dude sitting at the desk (nametag: Hunk, and if that isn’t accurate as hell) and chirps something about bringing in a guest before he drags Keith back to the showers.

“Okay, hop in!” he says with a bright smile.

He can’t be serious.  Except he apparently is.  Keith stares for a few long seconds before Lance seems to understand that he’s not moving.

“What’s wrong?” Lance asks with a frown.  He seems to get it after a moment.  “Oh!  No, it’s not anything gross!  I have some nice clothes you can wear because there is no way they’d let you in like that, but you definitely need a shower first, so.”  He makes some gestures toward the stalls.

It is at this point that Keith decides it’s not worth it. 

It’s been nice.  Fast and nerve-wracking, and more social interaction than he’s had in the past _year_ , sure, but still nice.  This, however?  This is his limit.  He knows it by the sigh pulsing in his chest that makes his eyes want to water.  Can’t have that.  He’s not exactly sure why it pinches his throat so tightly to hear that he’s not enough the way he is—maybe because today really is the first time in a long time that he feels like he’s well and truly _grounded_ , like he’s part of something, like it’s effortless to include him—but it does, and he no longer wants to waste his time here.  He spins on a heel and walks.

Lance makes a noise behind him, sneakers squeaking on the tile as he gives chase.  “Wait!  That’s not what I—I mean, I guess it is what I… look, uh, please?  It’s just that I’ve been thinking about that day I crashed into you for, like, a week straight now and I just—let me do something nice for you.  Let me dress you up for an afternoon.  It’ll be fun, I promise, and if you don’t like it you can just take the clothes and leave.”

He speaks in rushes of air, something that Keith notices get worse when he’s upset.  The turmoil of emotion flows and churns beneath the skin of his face, and if Keith had to hazard a guess, he’d say his element is water.  Obviously, he hasn’t unlocked it, or else this entire place would be under two feet of floodwater by now.  He’s much too open with his emotions.  Unprotected.

Unfortunately for him, Keith is the exact opposite.  To be open with fire is to be protected at all times.  He’s encased in heat-baked clay, his skin like the glaze of high-fire ceramic.  He can literally make Lance sweat with just a well-placed stare, the heat wafting from his very flesh, too hot to touch.  It’s easier than ever, now that he wants to draw it out—all the channels in his chest that he burns out day to day are fresh and healthy, hale, ready for the next wave.

Of course, it’s then that a picture of Shiro flickers across his mind and the flames sputter out, leaving nothing but the red-hot coals of his stomach and liver.  He doesn’t know if Lance can feel the difference, if he picks up on the chill creeping back in or not.  Maybe it’s his own face that gives it all away, makes Lance lean forward with just a pinch of hope in his dewy eyes, but either way, Lance just seems to _know_. 

“You’re persistent,” Keith says.  He tries to tell himself that he’s angry, but it doesn’t work when Shiro’s soft smile—chiseled intentionally into his memory, into the old lava flows—is lingering at his right hand.  He clenches his fingers.

“I am,” Lance agrees, pressing his hands together like a prayer.  “I am, and this is something I really want to do.  You have to let me, _please_?  I promise you’ll like it.”

Where he gets off being so bold, Keith doesn’t know.  He feels tired, suddenly.  Drained, aching.  He wants to lie down, to press the headache starting to thrum behind his eyes against a cool floor and breathe.  Instead, he showers in the stall next to Lance, letting droplets boil off of his chest.  He listens for Lance as he hums to himself under his own spray one door down, keeping one eye on his bag because it’s ingrained at this point to watch his stuff.  Nothing happens.  Well, nothing except Lance rolling in some shampoo and body wash, both in odd, minty flavors.

“Please don’t take this weird, but you smell like a campfire, and I always associate mint tea with my grandma’s fireplace,” Lance says from the other side of the partition.  His toes are tapping against the wet floor.  It’s not any weirder than the rest of Keith’s life.  Not even worth fussing about compared to the rest of this day, even.  He takes the mint and lets it waft around him.

The clothes aren’t anything special.  Some black dress pants and a hazy blue button-down shirt that sit about a size too large on him except where the shirt pinches around his chest.   Lance immediately starts to whine at him about getting his collar wet with his dripping hair, his own wrapped up primly in a towel, prompting Keith to sit down at a mirror to let him blowdry it.  Keith has to admit that looking at them now, side by side, there’s not so much difference anymore.

Apparently, they’re running just a little late.  Lance all but drags him back out of the men’s room.  At the main door, the guy from the front desk seems to be waiting for them.  Keith just accepts it.  There’s a children’s book that details the slippery slope of making one exception, and Keith is well on his way to the moral of the story.  If you give a mouse a cookie…

Lance introduces the guy as Hunk, just like his nametag.

“Wait, this is your friend?” Hunk asks, one thick eyebrow rising toward the bright orange band at his hairline.

“Yup!” Lance chirps.

Clearly less comfortable with the scenario than Lance is, Hunk studies Keith blandly.  Eventually, he looks at Lance’s expectant face, sighs, fixes a smile to his face, and says, “So… you’re into baseball?”

And Keith… he laughs.  It boils up like lava, so sudden that he can’t contain it and out it comes.  This is the most normal, ordinary, _mundane_ day he thinks he’s ever had.  He’s carrying around a studded bat very clearly thrumming with magical energy, dressed up like a doll in Lance’s hand-me-down fancy clothes, throat already sore from talking more today than he has in god knows how long and… and Hunk wants to know if he’s into baseball.  It’s so alien, so foreign a concept, that he laughs and laughs and soon enough Lance is joining in and Hunk is hovering about with an awkward smile until he, too, succumbs and they’re laughing together, all three of them, in the lobby of a 24-hour gym.

And then they’re going to the gallery where a kid named Pidge is showing a bunch of moving robotic sculptures.

And then they’re going home and Lance is elbowing Hunk into offering up a place to sleep because the show dragged on late and Pidge had to give a speech about the artistic intent behind the robots and Keith is too caught off guard to come up with a good excuse to get away and… what’s he supposed to say, anyway?  _No_?

He sits in a tiny guest room in a three-bedroom apartment, Pidge in the room next to him and Hunk and Lance in the room across, and he wonders if he’s lost his mind.  The life he’s fallen into is hectic and lively, leaving him on his toes in a way his own life on the run never has, but at the same time it’s reminiscent of something he left behind a long time ago and his heart thrums with the ache of remembrance. 

Running his fingers over the painfully white paint of the painfully unmarked frame of the painfully normal door, Keith hesitates for a long moment before he starts to carve his runes into the soft wood.  He’ll skip town tomorrow, or the day after, he decides.  He has time to stay here, in an apartment, with a soft parody of friendship drifting through the walls, for just one night.  It is, after all, just one night.

He sleeps like he hasn’t slept in a long, long time—deep and undisturbed.  He slips away before anyone else wakes up.  The next day, he tries to leave.  He doesn’t make it far enough.  In fact, he doesn’t make it far at all.  He tries his hardest to convince himself to force his feet to move, for the miles to drift away at his back, but no matter how hard he tries to stay away from the paths worn by Lance’s beat-up converse, he keeps finding his way back.

It starts small.  A one-time trip to an art opening.  A coffee in the morning.  Talking motorcycles and engineering with Hunk when they cross paths once… and then twice… until the moment when it’s weeks later and Pidge has caught him at the same street on the corner of the same bus depot that he and Lance keep meeting at, standing there staring at him with a wobbling lip and such determination cinched down tight over him that he’s all but held in place by its weight.

“I’ve been trying to catch you,” they say.  Keith swallows and his spit has turned to ash.  “You left your calling card,” they say, and he can see his runes reflected in their eyes.  He wants to deny it.  To separate himself from the weak man who’s been slowly adding scraps of their faces to the murk in his grey-matter, the one who hasn’t been able to break his own orbit around the city that should be at his back, the one who is slowly giving in and trapping himself.  He tries to get his mouth to tell them that he’s on his way out, away from this town and Lance and the friendship that’s been extended.  The last weeks means nothing, he tries to say. 

He can’t get the words out.  Instead, he remembers full belly-laughter, little robots on the bathroom sink, clear blue pleading eyes.

He can’t go.  He can’t _move_.

If you’re going through hell… he’s dug his grave by forgetting how to keep going.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cheers! Chapters 3 and 4 coming soon to a theater near you. ;D


	3. Dead Men Tell No Tales

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith gives his help to someone standing much too close. He's gone too far, slowed too much--he won't be able to make it out of here. What can a witch at the end of his rope do to save the people he loves? The answer will come soon enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [A song for the mood of this chapter.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oomkO5nHxnY&index=3&list=PLjUOr6SklsIwPpbCuU5M8cYpacf6rqNWM)

*

The road is a cold, unforgiving place.  Everyone who has lived there knows.  Concrete cuts, tarmac bleeds, and asphalt scrapes you away a layer at a time until there’s nothing left to find.  You may think that having an unquenchable fire in your chest would keep the chill at bay, warm you from the inside, but for Keith it’s nothing but a reminder.  A burning hot, _inescapable_ reminder, a callback to the day his heart was ripped from his chest and lava poured out in its wake.

The runes were his only balm.  They were a promise, from his only ally Beyond, that as long as he stayed safe he would eventually find what he missed most: Shiro, whose face was the first that he carved into the volcanic rock cooling under his ribs.  Those runes shielded him, lulled him to sleep, kept him safe—and when he had nothing else, they were there, humming softly with a frequency that, had it a scent, would have been sweeter than the dew on fresh cut flowers.

And yet, after everything… after all their years serving as his protector, his hope… it’s the runes that did him in.  Dead men tell no tales, but a dead man walking can still sing like a canary.  He is ensnared.

Amber eyes stare resolutely into unyielding black.  This _kid_ , five years his junior, seems to think they can break him by staring him down.  As if they know his weakness, as if they can see the longing burning behind the flames.  Still, they are woefully unprepared for the determination of someone who has been one step ahead, running from _demons_ , for as long as he has.  It’s easy to suck his fire in deep, to the pit of his stomach.  When he stares back it’s with eyes that are nothing but frozen soot.  He’s played this game before, and this, at least, he knows he won’t lose.

They break first.

 _I_ _’ve been looking for you_ , they say, as if it was inevitable that they’d find him.  And maybe it was.  They followed a trail of runes… _his_ runes… tracing all the way back past this city to the one before it, and the one before that, all the way down the coast to the place they both once called home.

 _Those runes_ , they tell him, _were written in my brother_ _’s blood the day he died_.

It’s an accusation, a plea, a hook on a fishing line sent into the depths of Keith’s impossible murk.  Little do they know that he has but to close a hand over it to burn it to ash.  Or maybe, probably, they’re well aware of the danger.  They are calculating in a way the other two aren’t—they’ve probably been building this case since the moment they first laid eyes on him.

Keith takes a deep breath, pushes down the urge to cough up the ash starting to press up into his solar plexus, and tries to hold strong.  He doesn’t want to hurt them, an ugly weakness he knows he isn’t able to rid himself of.  He forgets, these days, that his runes repel all monsters but one.  That human curiosity… a man’s desire for connection, _completion_ … it never does go away, does it?  He’s utterly, bitterly human, even after all this time.

 _Maybe_ _…_ they say, eyes large and sad.

The silence this time is softer, heavier, dragging down on the tip of every strand of Keith’s black hair.  Keith stares down at the eighteen-year-old kid, a kid who stares back at him as if he can give them answers, and his heart pumps faster and faster by the second, glowing like coals in a steam engine, pulsing with fiery heat.  He can’t keep the flames down forever.  Already they’re licking up his throat.  “Maybe what?” he asks, trying to stay cool and distant, like the stars.  He’s already failed. 

The problem, he thinks, is that he’s not sure why he did it.  Remembered Lance’s face after the day of the art show, he means.  He shouldn’t have—shouldn’t have accepted the invitation _to_ an art show in the first place.  Or slept in their house.  Or stayed in town at all that night.  It takes _so much effort_ for him to carve a visage into memory, the process a delicate operation of marking down each individual feature and filing them together in the right folder so that he can pull up the whole checklist all at once and match them to the face in front of him.  He only does it when he wants— _needs_ —to make sure someone stays, that he _cannot_ forget them.  He should have let Lance’s blue eyes and his bright smile fade back into obscurity like they were meant to.  He was never supposed to carve ocean-blue eyes next to Shiro’s proud smile.

He sighs.  It’s too late now.  Pidge takes him back to the apartment after that.  

On the way there, Keith tells them an abridged tale of a scared boy and his runes, the monsters they keep at bay; and in turn they tell him a story about a brother, a father, and a not-so-holy ghost.  The figure walking beside him is small, even smaller than Keith is, but the fierceness burns in them like the burn of pure oxygen.  There is danger in the way Pidge looks at him.  They’re shrewd, sharp.  Where Lance is loose and flowing, content to stay adrift, they are a whistling arrow aimed at the heart of the matter. 

He asks how long they’ve been looking for the runes, and their reply is an exhale and, between swallows and tears brushed angrily away, a short, bitter laugh. 

Before they cross the threshold, they come to an agreement.  Keith knows that the moment he opens his mouth to reply there will be no more room to deny that he’s given in—that he’s done that which he’s resisted for four years now.  He's stopped his ceaseless motion.  The finality of it is already tightening around his chest.  “I’ll help you avenge your brother,” he says, sealing his fate like he knew he would. 

Pidge nods and guides him inside.

There are few people who’s faces Keith remembers.  He remembers Shiro, the tuft of black hair that swept across his brow… and he remembers Lance, electric blue eyes and wide smile… and now, staring down at the kid who is again wiping angry tears from their eyes, preparing to push it all aside and walk into the apartment as if nothing is wrong, he starts the process all over again.  It helps, for good or bad, that they’re one of two people he’s ever met with enormous, round glasses that perch on the bridge of their nose like it’s still fashionable.  The other person who wore glasses like that is very, very dead, and though he hates to admit it, Keith may have all the answers as to _why_. 

He discretely massages the sore spot over his heart, holding his breath as he enters the home.  For the first time in four years he retraces his steps, nodding to the boys who call greetings from the kitchen.  He has the wand, his runes—his fire, his health.  His lungs are still clear, the brain fog lifted, so maybe… just maybe… he won’t invite Death by crossing paths with his own past. 

He’ll later know, as the forge in the cradle of his hipbones comes alight, that this is the moment.  That right now is the instant he loses his precarious grip on the balance between him and The Things That Watch. 

What a mistake he’s made.

 

“How long have you been alone?” Lance asks, on a Thursday night.

Helping, Keith knows, is sometimes easier said than done.  He’s done his best to help as many people as he could in the past four years, but what Pidge wants… it’s something he’s ached for before.  He’s fought and clawed and nearly had it in his hands… and had to let it go again, just like that, when the cost became too great to bear.

He was alone then.  So _achingly_ alone.  The loneliness nearly tore him apart.  Maybe he was always doomed to get caught in the tide here, in this house, with these people he’s slowly coming to trust. 

He’s been in the apartment a week, and he hasn’t made much progress whatsoever in picking apart the fine print of a contract he can’t even read, the contract that seals away all the secrets between him and the world next door.  If he just works at it, he knows he'll find a way to cut the bands on his tongue, the ones that hold him fast, without calling demons down on his head like his naive nineteen-year-old self.  Eventually, he can beat this—and do it right this time.

What he has accomplished, on the other hand, is eating more brownies than he thinks is probably healthy.  This is something he never thought would be possible again.

At Lance’s question, he hums a little, not looking up.  In his lap he has a picture of Matthew Holt, fourteen years old and hugging tight to a little Pidge with long hair swept up in a ponytail on the side of their head.  Matt is skinny, gangly, his glasses a little lopsided on his nose.  The shape of his smile brings a sour taste to Keith’s tongue, but it’s easy enough to ignore.  Unlike Lance.

“Keith.  Ke-eith.  Buddy.  Bro.”

“Um… hm?” Keith says, tearing his eyes away.

Apparently, Lance has something on his mind.  He’s sitting on the other side of the room, a physics text in his lap that he’s just about abandoned out of boredom, and his eyes are alight with a bright interest.  There are two sides to water-types, Keith has learned since getting to know Lance—they drift and flow with ease, but they also pull with invisible currents, and it’s none too hard for a current to become a riptide.  Lance isn’t about to let this go, whatever it is. 

Lance sucks in a deep breath, more air than he possibly needs for fourteen scant words, and blurts out, “How long has it been since you, like, had somewhere to stay like this?”

Keith bites the inside of his cheek.  He doesn’t want to say.  Doesn’t want to count the days, to face head-on the fact that it’s been long enough that he lays awake at night listening to the music that drifts from Lance and Hunk’s room and it still feels unreal.  It’s been long enough to leave his skin tingling at every innocent touch on the shoulder.  His entire body burns when Hunk wraps him up in what should be an easy hug.

Lance is watching him closely, eyes squinted almost shut.  “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to,” he says, and something unclenches in Keith’s chest, unraveling in the shape of calm, peaceful and sweet.  It’s the little things, he finds, that hurt all the more in the space before the world to begins to end.  It’s Hunk noticing the way he avoids painkillers and making him herbal teas instead—it’s Pidge sitting up at night with him when neither of them can sleep.  It’s Lance, asking all the important questions, but smiling and shrugging them away again when Keith can’t open his mouth and answer.

Later that evening, after Lance has nodded off on the couch, Pidge comes to sit beside him, looking over the notes Keith has scrawled on the edges of all the pages of their analysis.  “I’m glad you’re willing to do this,” they say, apropos of nothing.

Keith nods.  The task he’s undertaken—avenge Matt—is a test.  A trial.  Intentionally or not, this task has bound them together under the spell of a ticking timer.  They both know it will take precious time, has already eaten up hours and days and years, and that time is the one thing Keith holds dearer than even the trio of delicate new friendships he’s started cultivating.  Time is the only thing that will allow him to unravel the contract binding him, to find the loopholes that will allow him to get Pidge to Matt—and him to Shiro.

He knows that it’s clear to them that he barely sleeps some nights, watching The Things That Watch right back, clutching his wand tight to his chest.  He isn’t sure if they’ve picked up on the magic thrumming inside him on nights like those, but even if they haven’t they’ve definitely realized that there’s something out there, something dangerous.  Something that would gladly swallow Keith whole, leashed by masters who would rather see him torn to pieces than walk another day on this earth.

But it’s fine, he’s fine.  His wand is his safety net—the runes that burn inside it may have nailed him down when he most needed to move on, but _it_ _’s fine_.  His magic is strong—if he reinforces the barriers enough times, if he just tries _hard enough_ , he will make it through this.

This is what he tells himself until it’s already much too late, and then, all at once, he knows.  There is no such thing as _hard enough_ , and there is never just _fine_ , and when a friend of a friend who is quickly becoming a friend in their own right asks you to help find the creature that killed their brother you _really should say no_.

He wakes in a cold sweat two days later with dead certainty and a curtain of dread hanging about his heart and he _knows_ —The Things That Watch, Their aimless eyes just blinked. 

He turns his eyes on the clock at his bedside.  Four AM.  He’s wide awake at four in the morning, and he knows with absolute certainty that the Things are shifting, moving, suddenly antsy in the positions they’ve held, steadfast, for years.  Feeling the jitters down to his bones, Keith rolls from his bed, hitting the carpet on all fours and reaching for the knife he still keeps at his back day and night.  He listens, intently—there’s nothing.  Nothing he, simple witch that he is, could ever hope to hear.

He stays there for a space of time that feels like half of a lifespan, waiting for something more.  None comes.  Nothing but the snores of Hunk across the hall and the subtle mechanical chirping of one of Pidge’s robots. 

Straightening slowly, Keith licks his lips, eyeing the window and the blank, unmarked sill.  There’s a stock photo in a frame on the wall beside it—he walks over, forcing his feet to be weightless, and lifts it away.  In the space where the picture used to be, he carefully pricks his finger and draws out his runes, one more time.  He puts the picture back, staring at it for a long moment.

Then he slowly, soundlessly, starts to pull the bed away from the wall.

By the time the sun rises, he’s been awake nearly four hours, half that time spent with his head tilted, listening.  The Things that Watch have grown steadily louder, from silence to a low, barely audible cacophony of calls and trills.  Like birds in a forest.  Keith dreads the moment that it all goes silent—that will be the moment he knows that he’s been found.

By eight AM, he’s copied the runes down behind every picture, every piece of movable furniture, on the bulbs of every light fixture and in the unscrewed panels of every electrical socket.  He is suddenly, exquisitely stricken with the fact that he has no time.  There’s no time there’s no time there’s no _time_ —even if he were to leave now, throwing himself back out into the world with nary a goodbye, he’d be too late.  He will never make it out.

He spends the entire day holed up in his room, the door closed, knife in hand, listening.  He can feel eyes ghosting past him every time he so much as twitches—he forgoes all three meals in order to keep himself as still as possible.  It only serves to make him feel more and more like a mouse caught in the steel jaws of a trap.  His reckoning is coming, and he is defenseless.  There’s nowhere left to turn.

He makes it through the night, at least, and that is a relief above all others.  He’s safe, his friends are safe, for one more day.  He can’t, however, stay here any longer.  He’s already lost, a lost cause, but if he leaves now he can lure Them away from the others.  It’s the very least he can do.

Working as fast as possible, he spends as much time as he dares scrawling runes on every door and window in the apartment, no longer concerned with hiding them.  On the shower curtain and under the carpet where it’s come loose in the corners—around the edges of the door of the fridge and on cabinet shelves and jars of peanut butter.  He’s alone in the morning light, the house still fast asleep around him—or so he thinks, until he turns around and finds Hunk watching.

“What… are you doing?” Hunk asks, reaching slowly for the blender that Keith just put down.  Keith gently moves it away from his grasping fingers, arranging it on the counter with the runes facing outward.  He’s not sure what he says, exactly—some excuse to get past the large guy and out the door, hoping against hope that he’s warded them well enough that when he’s caught… when the Things come… they won’t follow his scent back here.

He can’t help it—the moment he’s out the door, he pulls the wand from his bag and holds it in one hand, the other nervously touching the handle of his knife under his jacket.  Distance is nothing for Things that walk between stars, but all the same he grits his teeth and pushes his body to _move_ , to get as far away as possible.

The farthest he’s ever gotten in one day is about thirty miles.  Today, he beats his record by a long shot.  Seven remote towns up the coastline and he’s finally greeted by the darkening of dusk, the light of his own flames shining like a beacon under the blanket of the night sky.  He cannot hide, and he cannot run—just after the sun sets They catch up.

Keith has always loved horror movies.  It’s just so funny to watch special effects and CGI when you know what the real thing looks like.  Now this… this is the real thing.

It starts as a long, shadowy glitch, something that slowly begins to come into focus in the far edges of his vision.  It’s a malfunction of the air, one of those optical illusions where shapes begin to appear when you blink your eyes.  Black sparks, like the inverse of electricity, or maybe something akin to black matter, crackle along skin that materializes from the space next to nothing.  It’s huge—in seconds it’s taller than him, taller than the old-timey streetlamp at his side and becoming realer each tick of the clock.  His wand looks like a number-two pencil aimed at it’s flank.  The air behind it rattles with the intensity of it, and its face… there is no animal to compare it to, because animals don’t _smile_ as they stare down their snout, a dozen eyes wide and unblinking, leaking from the mouth in thick globules of saliva/acid/transmaterial particulates that seem to bend reality wherever they fall, casually contorting the asphalt beneath them.

The Thing rises like it’s pushing up onto its haunches, and its mouth grins wider, stretching down its torso and yawning open until its tongue alone is larger than Keith’s entire body, and fuck.  _Fuck_.  How could he let it get so bad, how could he let Them catch up—

He is going to die tonight.  He’s going to die, and They will trace his trail back to the others and kill them, too.  He’s doomed them all.

The Thing with the mouth the size of a small car huffs, smiles, and lunges.

Keith can’t say if he screams or not.  He probably does.  He swings once with the bat and manages to score a handful of lines across one of its eyes, knocking it just slightly off course, but it’s on him again so fast it’s like he didn’t even try.  This time he definitely screams, watching his entire arm disappear between roiling rows of black teeth, black against black, shadow against darkness, oh god it’s biting down—

—and draws its black tongue down the limb, playful, as if it’s tasting him.  He gasps short breaths, wheezing, as its saliva makes his coat sleeve melt, dripping to the pavement.  His hand does a little better against the ooze, but it isn’t anywhere near pleasant.  It feels like the onslaught of sand during a dust storm, a thousand miniscule needle-fine points of entry beating down on every inch of his skin.  He yanks back, crying out, and teeth close—not on his hand, _thank you lord_ , but on the bat.

It’s like a dog with a bone.  A bone made of thick iron, infused with magic.  And a dog… a dog that came from Nowhere just to chew its way through him.  The bat shoots sparks, and with a terrifying crunch, the Thing rolls it between its teeth, looking down happily at the distraction for just a moment. 

Keith seizes the moment.  He runs.

How far can he get?

He breathes in as much oxygen as he can, stoking the forge inside him, breathes out smoke, breathes in, breathes out, faster, faster, he needs to summon all of his energy before the Thing pounces—

He hears it, behind him.  A line of claws gouging concrete from the sidewalk.  Gruff snorts and playful whines as it tears his bat to shreds.  It howls through the last of the splinters, calling it’s brethren, and the sound of it makes his bones shake and his running steps sway.  He draws his knife, knowing as he does that it will do no good.  His hand is shaking.  His knees feel like cotton, like nothingness, his tongue heavy with static, and through his fear the fire burns higher and higher, rising up through his lungs and into the back of his throat, flushing through his sinuses and pushing pushing _pushing_ on everything in it’s way _until_ —

 _He jumps_.

It’s not a moment too soon as he feels rather than hears a deep screeching whine vibrate through him, claws that sliced through the world as if it were butter now slicing at his boots, and his clothing falls away into a mouth the perfect size to swallow him in one neat bite.  The flames soar, a raging bonfire, and he’s _consumed_ —not by the Thing, but by a whirling spout of fire that yawns into the sky.

He aims, as well as he can aim, for the beginning of the trail.  His original home, the very first place he set down his runes, which has long since gone up in flame.  He lets the fiery trail of his being flow across the earth, like the spectral tale of a comet, and focuses everything inside of him on hitting his mark.

He misses.

Somehow, against everything he’s tried to do, against every instinct he’s ever had, he finds himself at the apartment.  Naked, wheezing, knife clutched in his hand, and burning a hole through the floor, he arrives just behind Pidge.

They jump, he sees it—they were sitting at their computer in the darkness of theor room, obviously not expecting anyone to come in.  They turn, already saying something, but his blood rushes in his head and he can’t—it’s so hot, he’s burning from the inside out.  The flames are coming from somewhere deeper inside than he’s ever felt them, something in his bones, and he feels light-headed.  Woozy.  Like he’s about to fall apart for real, melt into a puddle of molten lava on the floor right here.  The knife slips from his fingers, too heavy to hold.

Still, he somehow manages to bring his hands up to cover his indecency, one at his crotch and one across his chest.  Like that will do any good.  His limbs are shaking, muscles quivering from strain, and from one moment to the next he loses his balance, hitting the floor like he’s made of so many potatoes in a sack, his head smacking down with a sickening jolt.  He can only imagine how much worse this would be if he was still in his binder.  At least he didn’t land on his knife.

“—oh shit, hang on, shhh it’s okay, let me take care of you—”

Belatedly he realizes that he’s moaning.  He pushes himself up on shaky hands just as a blanket descends onto his shoulders, and he’s hazily aware that he’s going to set something on fire.  Nothing he can do about it now.  He can’t stop it when coughs rip up from deep in his lungs.  Sparks fall from his mouth, trailing bright white spit so hot that he can feel it on his hands half a foot away.  He can’t stop.  He can’t keep it all inside.  He can’t _breathe_.

“Hunk!” Pidge’s voice echoes in his ear.  “Hunk, I need a favor _right now_ —"

Tuning in and out of a conversation he doesn’t understand, Keith doesn’t mean to throw up, but at this point he gives himself the excuse of being on what might be the brink of death, if not just the worst day of his life.  It’s mostly blood, anyway—it comes out like melted iron, strings of it descending from his mouth in searing lines, scorching black hash marks into the carpet. 

He lets himself hack up as much as he wants for a few seconds, his face pinched up and head hanging between his shoulders.  Then he forces his knees underneath him, ready to rise to his feet.  He’s screwed, and he needs to protect them before they’re screwed right along with him.  There’s only one thing he can do now, something he promised never to do but he can’t—they cannot die along with him.  He refuses.

“—so you’ve graduated to flat out asking for my shirts instead of stealing them, that’s cool,” Hunk’s voice is saying, coming to Pidge’s door.  It swings open just as Keith regains his footing, Pidge at his elbow trying to keep the blanket on his shoulders.  “Uh?” Hunk says, eloquent.  “Where are your clothes?”

His clothes are back with the Thing.  Back on a street seven towns up the coastline, probably being trampled underfoot by Things as they sniff out and separate his measly existence from the rest of humanity’s muck.  Let Them—the clothes are a lost cause.

Hunk looks so concerned, though, like he’ll go and pick them up as soon as Keith says the word, and fear grips the last functioning brain cells that Keith has.  His mouth opens, fear driving him.  “You can’t go.  You can’t go!  It’s not safe, it’s not—”

Pidge takes his hand, stroking it soothingly.  He pauses to breathe, still desperate for air.  Dear god, he’s slurring.  The words are barely coming out.  The two of them exchange looks.  Handling him like a spooked animal, Hunk eases into the room.

“I’m going to put this on you, okay?” he whispers, holding up the shirt in his surprisingly steady hands.  Keith gasps air, bobbing his head.  He allows the two of them to take charge, just for a moment, to help with the unease carved deep into Hunk’s brow and the nervous fluttering twitching through Pidge's hands.  He focuses closely on Hunk, his element—Earth, he thinks—and Pidge's—maybe spirit—and holds himself as still as he can.  Just for a moment.  Just long enough for the shirt.

Then he’s pushing past to get at their front door, causing Lance to yelp and fall off the couch as he passes, an exhale of soot wafting over his tongue from the inferno inside him.  Hunk and Pidge follow in his wake, twittering about, Hunk going to the kitchen for a glass of water as Pidge tries to get Keith to just _sit down, okay, please, you’re scaring us_.

He knows.  He knows, but he _can_ _’t_.  With the last of his strength, he fights his way to the door and, without ceremony, shoves his fingers down his throat.

It’s horrible, feeling his insides clench around the cooling lava in his gut.  He coughs up more blood into a shaking, cupped hand, dipping equally shaky fingers into the scarlet mess and raising them to the wood.  He begins to write out a new set of runes, nothing like the ones that he’s called his own all these years—these are old, older than dirt itself, and they burn themselves through the paint with the growing sizzle of a fire hotter than any he could possibly produce.

The others, catching on, try to stop him, to hold his arms and restrain them, but there is heat burning right through his fingertips all the way up to his elbows.  He’s well aware that most of his skin must sear like the grate of a lit stove.

With one final stroke, the task is done.  He presses both hands to the door, leaving behind bloody handprints.  The last of his strength is fading fast, too fast—lightheaded, he’s barely awake when his legs give and he hits the ground for the second time.  Existence goes wonky around him, the clocks around the apartment skipping beats in time with the skipping of his palpitating heart.  Hunk is there for a moment, lifting his chin with a potholder to coax water down his throat.  Lance and Pidge swim beside him, talking over each other, so worried but so distant.  He’d reach out to them but he has no energy to move, no energy to hear, nothing left inside of him but ash in growing dunes, pushed up against the walls of his chest cavity, still hot enough to scorch. 

He feels sick.  His entire body feels wrong.  Achy and burnt up, used up, like he’s seared through every healthy cell and left nothing behind.

He blinks, and Hunk is gone.  Another blink, and he feels a thick arm around his waist.  He tries to open his mouth with a warning, but the arm has already started lifting and his lips part on vomit.  He really doesn’t mean to throw up, but—well, okay, the second time he did it on purpose, but not the first time and definitely not this time.  He hangs onto that thought as Lance screeches, the water coming back up boiling, splattering on the floor.

Everyone is yelling.  He hopes they’re okay.  He didn’t mean to—he didn’t mean for any of this.  He hopes he didn’t hurt anyone.  Not with his power, not by leading the Things right to them, and, most of all, not because of the creature he just summoned straight into their home.

He loses consciousness after that.

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, you're probably going to have to wait a bit for the last chapter. You had to wait for this one, and for that I'm also sorry, but you should always feel free to leave comments or check out my other work in the meantime.
> 
> Cheers!

**Author's Note:**

> The rest of the fic isn't quite done, but it'll be going up soon enough. Cheers~


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